


Summer's End

by sarahworm



Category: The Borrowers - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Multi, this is following the books in case it wasn't clear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-01
Updated: 2019-06-25
Packaged: 2019-07-21 02:21:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16150514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarahworm/pseuds/sarahworm
Summary: Arrietty had never thought growing up would be this confusing. Seasons are changing, Spiller's missing, and something has to give.





	1. Chapter 1

“Haven’t seen Spiller in a while,” Homily said over breakfast.

“I expect he’s just tied up,” Pod said, “it’s not like you to wonder about Spiller.”

“Did he seem quieter than usual the last time we saw him, Arrietty? Did he tell you where he was going?”

Arrietty flushed, knowing what her mother was getting at. “No,” she muttered, poking at the crumbs of her toast and feeling like a child again.

“Well,” said Homily, a hard smile on her face, “I’m sure he’ll turn up eventually.”

 

                Arrietty retreated to the garden and hid under the leaves of a tomato plant. It was late summer; there were probably only a few weeks of borrowing left before Whitlace cleaned the garden out, and Spiller had been missing since July.

                Arrietty felt an unpleasant twinge in her stomach at the thought that it might be her fault. It probably wasn’t – there had never been anything said, exactly, and Spiller didn’t usually dictate his comings and goings by other people. But it might be. There had been something not quite right about the way he’d left.

 

                Arrietty had tea with Peagreen the next afternoon. It had become a weekly tradition the last year, just the two of them in Peagreen’s birdhouse sitting room. Arrietty had never been sure if her parents knew, and if they would have approved. It felt too grown-up, somehow.

                Or maybe that was just Peagreen. Arrietty had always hoped he would seem a little less consistently older than her when she was an actual adult, but as the months passed that hadn’t really been the case.

                “Have you ever thought of painting people?” she asked abruptly.

                “No,” he said, “not particularly. Who would I paint?”

                “Well, you could start with the Poor Young Man. To practice on. He never moves.”

                He laughed. “The ghost? I thought you were going to suggest yourself.”

                “Would you?”

                He inclined his head in a funny way. “Much as I’d be honored by the model, I’m sure I couldn’t do her justice.”

                This was what Arrietty liked to think of as an Overmantal Moment. They always made her suddenly self-conscious, like there was a joke she wasn’t quite getting.

                “Anyway,” she heard herself saying, “I wouldn’t want to sit still for that long.”

                Something shifted in Peagreen’s face, and Arrietty’s twinge was back – but she blinked hard and he relaxed into a grin. “No,” he said, “I don’t suppose you would.”

 

                Arrietty was over to the church for dinner that night. Mostly to see Timmus, although, as her mother said, it wouldn’t hurt to be a dutiful niece to the elder Hendrearys now and then.

                “Summer’s almost over,” her aunt said. “We’re seeing the end of the wedding season over here. Summer weddings are so lovely. Don’t you agree, Arrietty?”

                Arrietty supposed.

                “Have you ever thought about one for yourself?” Lupy continued.

                “I haven’t thought, much…” Arrietty said, letting her words trail off.

                “Well, you should!” Lupy said cheerily. “You don’t want to be stuck with a winter wedding.”

 

                She sought Peagreen out the next day, partially out of guilt but mostly because the thought of another day borrowing in the garden gave her a sharp stab of loneliness.

                She found him in the ivy, staring out at nothing in particular. She settled herself on a loop in the next vine over.

                “Peagreen,” she began, “I’m sorry for yesterday – what I said – if it hurt.”

                “It’s quite alright,” he said gently. “I was thinking of something else.”

                She was still trying to decide whether she could ask what that was when he continued, just a little too carelessly, “your mother says you don’t know when Spiller will be back.”

                “Yes,” said Arrietty, gripped briefly by a sudden and unfamiliar emotion. She thought she ought to elaborate.

                “I wasn’t surprised by that,” he said, “I don’t suppose there’ll ever be a day we know when Spiller will be around.”

                “No,” she agreed, shocked to hear something like sorrow creeping into her voice. “He wouldn’t want it like that.”

                Peagreen shifted towards her, their shoulders now leaning on each side of the same vine. “So maybe those of us who stay behind have to make some choice of our own.”

                “I didn’t mean to make him leave!” Arrietty burst out. She felt on the edge of tears.

                “Spiller?” Peagreen looked surprised at her confession but reached around the vine awkwardly to take her elbow in comfort. “Did you talk to him after all?”

                “No – I think he wanted to say something to me, he was almost hovering and it’s so unlike him – but I’ve just felt so out of sorts all summer and I avoided him. And before he left, he came up behind me and said ‘Goodbye, Arrietty’ and I said ‘goodbye, Spiller.’ Spiller never tells you he’s going like that, he just does!”

                “I’m sure he’ll come back, Arrietty,” Peagreen said, and his tone was so soft that Arrietty gave in, putting her face in her hands mid sob.

                She heard him climb around to sit next to her, and then she felt his arm go around her shoulders. When she lifted her face from her fingers, he brushed the tears from her cheek and then kissed it, very softly, but lingering.

                Arrietty let her eyes close and turned to meet her mouth to his.

                She’d kissed Peagreen a handful of times over the past few months, always unexpectedly, neither of them sure what do afterwards. As always, it made her feel like she was floating. But she’d never done it with so many tears, never in such bright sunshine, never when they’d just been talking about Spiller…

                Arrietty tumbled back to earth and tugged her head back rather sharply. Her whole stomach ached. She forced herself to meet Peagreen’s eyes.

                He looked as ill at ease as she felt.

                “You were saying about…choices?” Arrietty choked out.

                He nodded sadly. “I had rather hoped you had made one already. It might make things easier. For…everyone.”

                “Peagreen, I _can’t_.”

                “Well, it’s not like I can either-” he broke off, with a frustrated noise.

                She wasn’t sure what he meant by that, but she didn’t think she could force more words right now. She tucked her head gingerly under Peagreen’s chin and they sat together in the sunlight for a time.


	2. Chapter 2

                Arrietty was lying flat on her back in the garden, shaded by the leaves of a cucumber plant, thinking about the look she would get from mother for letting the dirt work itself so far into her hair.

                The ground was warm still. If Arrietty closed her eyes, she could cast herself back to summers gone by. Back when her family was still wandering, when Arrietty was a creature of the wilds as much as the walls.

                “Hello, Arrietty,” she heard Spiller say. She scrambled up to prop herself on the heels of her hands.

                It was as if she’d summoned him with her memories. Even standing over her as he was, Spiller was so lithe and quiet he barely seemed substantial at all.

                But he was here, and when she saw his chest rise and fall, Arrietty caught her own breath. He was here, and how that she knew she hadn’t driven him away for good, she felt relieved and also rubbed raw.

                Spiller just looked at her. It occurred to her that he was probably waiting for her to talk, as she customarily did. She thought about whether to ask where he’d gone, or when he was leaving again, or why he’d come back, but she figured he wouldn’t give her a satisfying answer to any of those questions.

                “They were all asking when you were coming back,” she said.

                “Were they?”

                “Well, my parents were. Peagreen said he expected we’ll never know when you come and go.”

                At the mention of Peagreen, Spiller’s face twitched like he was trying to suppress a smile. Arrietty felt briefly, wildly jealous. “Of course, I agreed,” she said hotly before she could stop herself.

                Spiller laughed. Embarrassed at her outburst, Arrietty tried to cast her eyes elsewhere, but he held out a hand to her. She grasped it and he pulled her up from the ground with a strength she wasn’t expecting. As she was righted, she swayed forward a bit too much and put her other hand up to brace herself against his upper arm.

                “Sorry,” he said, steadying her. She jerked her palm back from his skin back as if burned. But he was still holding on to her hand. Their faces were oddly close, closer than they’d been in a long time. Arrietty thought she could feel the stillness of the garden and the shade pressing down on every inch of her, trapping her here, caught in Spiller’s gaze and held close to him.

                “Did you just get here?” she asked, knowing the answer but needing to say something. He broke eye contact and she let out a breath of air.

                “Yes. Have some things for your parents.” He made to move away, but she kept hold of his hand and he was tugged back; the idea of her mother and father intruding was suddenly unbearable.

                “Let’s go see Peagreen,” she said, the only thing she could think of and knowing that he wouldn’t mind. “He’ll like to see you again.”

               

                Peagreen was working, but he put his paints away with enthusiasm and grinned at Spiller, leaning towards him as though he wanted to shake his hand. Spiller, for his part, looked more at ease indoors than he typically did, refusing a stool but leaning casually against the wall. Arrietty chose to sit next to him on the floor, legs splayed out in front of her.

                It was always a little off-kilter, starting a conversation between the three of them. Spiller was so reserved and Peagreen so unconcerned that Arrietty usually just ended up filling the gaps, and she mostly didn’t mind, but today, she just wanted the space to think in their presence.

                “I hate the end of summer,” Arrietty finally said.

                “Don’t we all?” Peagreen replied. “No borrower likes the winter.”

                Arrietty glanced to the side in time to see Spiller nod and shiver sympathetically.

                “Still,” Peagreen continued, “it’s wasn’t so bad when the humans were here, and I was living over the mantel. They would have these parties…” he trailed off, and Arrietty couldn’t tell if the memories that had distracted him were happy or sad. She didn’t ask Peagreen about his childhood much. None of them did; it would have felt the same kind of strange as calling him by his real name. Arrietty wondered how much he got lonely for his family, for those long-ago days.

                “I don’t suppose you ever learned to waltz, Arrietty?” Peagreen asked, snapping her out of her reverie.

                “What?”

                “Waltz. It’s a dance. A human dance. We used to try it sometimes.”

                “No, I have no idea what that is.” Reflexively, Arrietty looked at Spiller, who shrugged.  

                Peagreen stood up. “I’m not very graceful anymore, but I can show you two how to do it. Come over here.”

                Neither Spiller nor Arrietty budged. Peagreen smiled. “It won’t hurt you to try. You’re both light on your feet, I am sure you can pick it up.”

                Arrietty really had barely any idea what he was asking them to do, but looking at Peagreen’s face gave her a flash of energy. Besides, she felt she ought to represent the Clocks against his streak of Overmantel pride. She got to her feet and looked at Spiller. Spiller looked like his distaste for anything indoors was battling his curiosity; curiosity won, and he came to stand next to Arrietty, bumping into her shoulder.

                Peagreen flickered around them, making them face each other and positioning their hands. He demonstrated the way they had to move with his own steps – Spiller forwards, Arrietty backwards – and then talked them through the motions until they could string a few halting steps together on their own.

                Neither of them moved much more easily than Peagreen, really. Spiller, who moved as smoothly as a cat in the outdoors, took each step with too much hesitancy, and Arrietty was too distracted by Spiller’s hands and Peagreen’s eyes to remember the order her feet were supposed to go in.

After the second time they backed into a table, Peagreen threw up his hands in mock exasperation. “This is useless. Spiller, even I can lead better than this. Here.” He took Arrietty’s hands.

“I don’t see the difference,” said Spiller, watching, but soon enough they’d all given up hope of maintaining form or rhythm, trading partners between the three of them and lurching happily around the room.

 

Spiller ended the party by slipping out to go fetch the remaining items from his boat before it became too late. Arrietty wanted to offer to help him, but looked at the sinking sun and realized that her parents might worry. She dashed home for dinner, and maybe Peagreen was right, because she did feel lighter on her feet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What even is this story, don't ask me.
> 
> No but I do know how I want it to end, it's just these parts in the middle are squishy.


	3. Chapter 3

The next day, Arrietty was compelled by her parents to invite Spiller to supper. Her father brought it up and her mother acquiesced with a sniff that it was, after all, the polite thing to do.

They took their meal that evening just steps from the honeycombed grating, and Arrietty watched the rays of the sun as it tipped towards the horizon, thinking that the days were already beginning to grow shorter.

But she didn’t mind Spiller dining with them, really, it was just that it made her think of the bygone days on the river, when the four of them would eat under the open air, Arrietty not knowing anything of the future except the next bend. And though she had often felt nostalgic for that kind of freedom, that kind of adventure, in the days since they had come to live at the rectory, she found now that she would ache to leave it for good.

_What’s become of me?_ She thought, in between bites of shortcake. _When did I become someone who sits and can’t decide what her life should be? When did I become melancholy, and indecisive, and as unsure of the unknown as my mother?_

Across the table, Pod and Spiller were talking of – what else? – Spiller’s travels, and where he might be going next. “I say,” said Pod, when Arrietty began listening again, “how long has it been since you met us, now? We must be one of your longest-lived stops!”

“Don’t remind me,” said Homily. “I don’t like to think of how long it’s been since we saw Fairbanks. Arrietty was still such a child.”

Arrietty’s cheeks burned.

Spiller shrugged. “Not the longest,” he said, “but I’ve seen you more than most, maybe.” And then he ducked his head, and a quiet settled over the table.

Arrietty cleared her throat. “I was thinking the other day,” she said, “about when we lived in the boot, and I would climb the hedges, and how the fields looked, all golden.”

Spiller had still been looking down, but now he looked up, and met Arrietty’s eyes. “The garden here is like that.”

When she was particularly annoyed at him, or in a flippant mood, Arrietty often thought that Spiller had a way of looking right through you, as though a person in front of him could be as insubstantial as air. But under his gaze now, she felt rooted, pinned down and seen entirely.

“From the vines of the climbing ivy, I’d reckon,” Peagreen said from the doorway. Arrietty jumped, and could have sworn Spiller did, too. Peagreen had come up without any of them noticing; Arrietty almost wondered at how he could do that, before remembering that he’d borrowed alone for years. She didn’t like to think of Peagreen in solitude. He’d welcomed them all in as easy as a breeze, and it didn’t feel right to picture him without someone to be friendly at.

He was giving a slight bow to her parents now, as he always did in any sort of formal setting like this. _Overmantel pride._

But then, “I’m sorry to intrude on your supper,” he said, “but I was wondered if I could borrow your daughter and your guest for a stroll? I find myself wanting company for one of the last real summer sunsets.”

 

“I was watching the sun, too,” Arrietty murmured as soon as they were through the grating. “Thank you.”

He grinned at her. “Spiller told me he was going over there for supper, and I thought you might like some rescuing.”

Spiller laughed. “It wasn’t bad.”

They emerged fully onto the garden path. Peagreen flung out a hand. “No, but isn’t this better?” he gesticulated, taking in the sun-baked stones, the creeping ivy, the crimsoning sky. “It’s the end of summer. Enjoy it with me.” He looped an arm around Arrietty’s waist, pulling her beside him, and with his other hand clasped Spiller’s, nearly jerking him forward.

Behind Peagreen’s back, Spiller and Arrietty looked at each other. She was selfishly glad to see her own confusion reflected in his face.

Peagreen led them among the ground ivy, then just as abruptly released them and dropped onto a loose bit of paving rock.

Arrietty was reminded of how many times she’d found Peagreen painting or writing outside. She’d never thought of it before, but really he was as at ease in his near and tamed out-of-doors as Spiller was in his wild rivers. They were alike in that way.

_And I’m only perched in the hedge_ , she thought wildly, _longing to be both, belonging to neither._

(A still-quieter voice whispered of where she’d once thought she’d belonged, in what kind of company – but no, that was all over now, all over long ago.)

Spiller squatted next to Peagreen. And she didn’t want to, but the things she’d just been thinking of reminded Arrietty of the last time they’d all been here, like this, and what she’d said, and ow much she’d regretted it.

“Spiller,” she broke in, suddenly. Both of them stopped talking and looked up at her.

“I just…” Arrietty felt weak, giving in, but now that she’d been thinking about it she felt she might burst if she didn’t put words to her thoughts. “That time, when we were first living here, and you said you would speak to…and I said you wouldn’t do it, that you were a-afraid,” her voice caught and she hated it, hated herself for feeling this way over something from months past, hated the both of them for the twin looks they gave her of, dear lord, something like tenderness—

“I’m sorry,” Arrietty finished. “I’m sorry. It was a hurtful thing to say.”

Spiller blinked up at her, and she suddenly minded horribly that she was standing up and they were sitting down. And Peagreen, growing a slow and perplexing smile on his face, looked at Spiller and then jerked his head in Arrietty’s direction.

Spiller unfolded himself and stood facing her. “I accept your apology,” he said, completely out of character. “And, Arrietty-“

He faltered just a breath.

“I told her,” he said, finally. “This last time I went away, I went back and told her you were safe.”

For a moment Arrietty couldn’t even comprehend what he had just said. Then, when the world stopped spinning around her, all she could do was say, “you spoke to her? You spoke to Miss Menzies for me?”

Spiller nodded, looking down at his hands now, reddening slowly.

Arrietty could think of nothing else to do but throw herself at him, arms around his neck and mouth at his jawline, giving her thanks over and over.

He stumbled back a half-step, but he caught her, and after a moment, settled the sinew of his arms against her hips.

“You don’t have to thank me,” Spiller said into Arrietty’s hair.

She pulled her face back from his neck, horrified to discover that she’d made it wet. Spiller smelled like the earth. “But I do. I doubted you would do it, but-“ She bit down on the end of that sentence, looking at Peagreen, who raised an eyebrow.

“You were right,” she said, addressing it at the space somewhere over his shoulder. It was dawning on her that Peagreen had understood Spiller as well as she had, or better, for almost as long as he’d known him, which was infuriating, because Spiller and Arrietty had been testing each other for years.

“I usually am.”

“You are not,” Arrietty replied, because she had to say something. But Spiller was laughing; she could feel it in his chest, which she realized she was still pressed against.

Spiller nudged her chin towards him with one calloused thumb. She looked into his face and saw that he was smiling, so she smiled back. And then he was kissing her.

Behind her closed eyelids, Arrietty thought again about the open sky. He was her river. She drank.

When they broke apart, Arrietty blinked at the sunset rays falling in streaks across Spiller’s face. For one sinking moment she grasped that they could never go back, and she was drowning – but Spiller was still smiling, so it was alright.

When she glanced down to where Peagreen was still sprawled on the rock, he patted the seat next to him, and looking at his quirked eyebrow, Arrietty remembered something. The way he’d motioned Spiller to give her his confession. She sat down in a huff. “You knew!”

“I told him this morning,” Spiller said. “For advice.”

This was so offensive Arrietty didn’t know how to speak. She settled for swatting Peagreen on the arm, because he was closest.

Peagreen took her angry hand and threaded their fingers together, and she found to her irritation that she was suddenly less upset.

With his other hand, Peagreen took Spiller’s and pulled him down to his other side. And Spiller obliged. Peagreen kissed him in the corner of his mouth and Spiller – Spiller visibly melted, leaning his forehead on Peagreen’s cheek. Arrietty blushed in sympathy.

They sat like that for some time until Arrietty asked, “how did she take it?”

Beads of silence stretched along the fading light.

“She cried,” Spiller said at last.

Arrietty’s heart, full to bursting just minutes ago, broke.

But Peagreen brushed the tears from her cheekbones, and Spiller soothed the palms of her hands with his own, and it was on the way to whole again.

Arrietty wondered if this was all adulthood was, in the end. Feeling your heart break and heal, over and over, every ache mended by a spark of joy.

The sun was fully gone, now. In the twilight garden, the fireflies were beginning to come out.

 

               

 


End file.
